by J B Lucas
“No, of course not.”
“Have you ever climbed a house?”
“No.”
“Then shut up.”
The bride’s house was a tall, utilitarian block. The walls around it reached up high, lined with broken pottery as an added deterrent. They had waited until after dusk, and now Loreticus and Selban stared up at the wall.
“It’s tall,” said Loreticus quietly.
“Yup.”
“Up you go.”
Selban looked back and forth between the house and its neighbour, which was lower and had ample hand- and footholds. Loreticus sat on the floor, prodding his pipe and then packing it with apple tobacco. He occasionally glanced up at Selban, who was deftly moving from window to ledge, on to the next window, moving up through the storeys. Around his torso he had a large length of pale rope wrapped diagonally, but otherwise he was clothed in old dark pieces. Against the burgundy paint of the house wall, he blended in, visible only to a person looking just for him.
The spymaster lit his tobacco and then squinted up to see Selban on the edge of the flat roof. He was doing something with one end of the rope. A low, soft whistling descended as the rope blurred in Selban’s hand, then it disappeared. A large knot in the end of the rope slapped against the wall twenty feet above Loreticus’s head, then slowly crawled back up. Again Selban spun it, threw it and recovered it. On the third time, the rope caught around a thick tree branch which peeked over the wall of the bride’s house. The gap between the houses was around ten feet, and Loreticus wondered how Selban was going to traverse the space. Personally, he would have dropped the rope, climbed down the house wall and then back up the taller wall. But he wasn’t Selban, and Selban certainly wasn’t him.
The agent above seemed to take a good hold on the rope, then jumped off the roof. Loreticus coughed the pipe out of his mouth in shock, but the rope snagged tight and Selban swung gracefully but rapidly across the gap, until with a wallop and an exhalation, he smashed into the exterior of the wall.
“Are you okay?” called Loreticus in a stage whisper.
A remorseful grunt was the reply. Small coins started dropping on to the street, and Loreticus desperately tried to catch them before they clinked in the silence of the suburban evening.
Selban started climbing the rope stiffly. He got to the top of the wall, reached behind him with one hand and drew out a thick leather cloth, which he deftly flung over the small shards on the top of the structure. He hauled his chest over the top, then paused.
He looked down at Loreticus with a panicked gesture, waving him to climb up the rope. The spymaster jumped and skipped up the wall but couldn’t touch the bottom of the line. He made a wide armed shrug and pointed towards the front door. Selban looked around, then nodded.
Loreticus scampered along the alleyway as quietly as he could until he came to the illuminated street with the bolted main entrance to the house. He looked back to see Selban’s shadow balancing in an athlete’s walk over the broken pottery on the wall. Then he stepped lightly on to the large flat roof and vanished.
The spymaster casually looked around the street. There were signs of life in other houses, but most had the street-facing façade closed and secure. No witnesses, either tonight or earlier in the week.
A clunk, a squeak, and then a dragging noise. The righthand door crept open. Selban’s pallid face appeared. Loreticus squeezed in, and the door shut out the silent light again. They paused for a moment, then Selban set off again.
Around the room, there was only one random light burning, enough for the servants to patrol regularly. The room was subject to the miniscule shuddering of this single flame, offering deep shadows and an eerie homeliness. There was affluence in this home, but not true wealth. Everything was expensive, built to last, but ultimately it was all new.
Selban took Loreticus’s shoulder and pointed at a huge landscape of a town of towers on a hill. The spymaster shook his head at the implied question, then paused and slunk closer. Two of the large buildings were zealot, and the quiet forests behind the town sat in front of a distant sea.
“Somewhere in the far west,” he whispered when he was back next to Selban. “Not sure where.”
The agent nodded, then gestured the spymaster to follow him. They stole through another room – this one without any light but the moon which had now risen with a proud radiance and had thrown everything in an achromatic contrast. They stood by the open door, and Selban pointed.
In the garden sat three people, two in chairs, one on the floor. The chairs had their backs to the intruders, but the one on the ground was a young woman with loose, ragged dark hair. She was dressed in simple, loose white, and she rocked, crying. As they watched, she took her hands from her face and wailed with a call that pierced the stones of the building, “Daddy. Daddy.”
“What the buggery are you two doing here?” shouted someone. Four large veterans in domestic uniforms strode forward, reaching for thick clubs at their belts. They were coming from the lighted foyer, casting long shadows which grew with monstrous menace.
“Wait!” said Loreticus, standing straight and facing the four men with his wiry frame. “I am the emperor’s spymaster. I’m here on palace business.”
“Like buggery you are, little man,” snarled the lead guard.
“Then strike me and find out what happens to you, old man,” snapped Loreticus. “Demetrian will chase you to the bloody mountains if you dare lay a finger on me.”
The mention of the imperial guard’s name drew the soldiers up. No-one called him by his given name with such ease unless they were a suicidal bluffer or a genuine friend.
“My name is Loreticus, and this is my deputy. Why has no-one been answering the door?”
“The family is in mourning,” said the guard, confused. “They need privacy.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then stop pissing on your shoes and take me to the master of the house.” The guards paused. “Or should I come back with an imperial guard to get the same result?”
“I’ll go first,” said the guard, “Please follow.”
The guards brought torches with them, lighting up a small circle of ground which moved with them. Loreticus could see that the bride and her mother had disappeared whilst they had been engaged with the guards. A tall, tired man stood ready for them, ignoring the guard who was whispering in his ear.
“I heard everything. I know who you are,” he said as they approached. There was still a gentle brogue in his voice. He gestured for them to take the chairs. “Are you a father, spymaster?”
“No.” Loreticus sat, admiring the man’s coolness. He did not show any surprise or anger at their intrusion. Instead, there was a deep resignation in his manner. He had different eyes to his daughter, a light green which seemed empty in the torchlight. “What’s your name?”
“Struss, and you’re here to visit my daughter Pia.”
“You’ve shut her away from people.”
“I’m protecting my daughter,” he said. “You’d do the same. She’s never been a strong girl, and with such a passionate romance and rapid marriage, well . . . it just feels like there’s a curse looking for a home.”
“She told you that Roban’s dead?”
“She did.”
“Does she know that he was poisoned?” asked Selban, drinking from a cup which had been left on the table.
“Poisoned?” Struss looked shocked. “Suicide?”
“We don’t think so,” said Loreticus, blocking off Selban’s curious look. That was one avenue that they hadn’t considered. “Why would a groom commit suicide on the day of his wedding?”
“Ah,” said Struss. He looked at his feet for a moment. “Just like my daughter wasn’t born with a thick enough skin for this world, Roban’s mind wasn’t completely ready for the realities of life. He was wonderful with children but couldn’t manage an adult existence.
”
“An ‘idiots’ romp’,” stated Selban absently, looking over his shoulder at the house.
“Yes, bluntly put. If you wanted to quote the playwright, you’d call it an ‘idiots’ romp’.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t go to the theatre,” said Loreticus.
“Two lovers who find comfort in the other as neither can face the world on their own.” Struss put his hand to his forehead. He looked exhausted, drained. “She is my blessing and my burden. I’ll tell you a warped part of this, spymaster. I completely disagreed with the wedding, but I don’t expect that to be a novel situation. She told me that they would wait, but then the Emperor offered him the gardens for that day and they raced into it.
“A father loves his daughters unconditionally. If she needs me to protect her until her dying day, then I’ll stand in the way of every one of you. It is the only thing that makes me feel worthy of her.”
“A cursed wedding, as you foresaw,” said the spymaster.
“Indeed. Unnatural.”
Loreticus looked at Struss, taking in the sardonic creases and the great falling lines of sadness in his cheeks.
“We need to see her.”
“She’s gone,” said Struss. “She’ll come to you when she’s back in her head. At the moment, she’s nothing but a crying child.”
“The emperor needs answers. There was blood spilled in his gardens.”
“I understand, Loreticus. But before a spymaster or an emperor demands answers from my beautiful daughter, they’ll have to go straight through me. No-one will break my daughter whilst I stand by.”
Chapter 5
“Holy bollocks,” said Selban as they exited into the street. “I feel rather ill after that.”
“I didn’t know that you were that athletic,” remarked Loreticus, gesturing towards the wall.
“Do you think I could ask for my rope back?”
“Probably not the right time for that,” said the spymaster. They turned and started walking back. This part of town didn’t have as many street torches as the centre, and they travelled through long patches of shadow. In front of them at all times was the palace, its walls dark but with the brief tops of its buildings aglow in the illuminated streets inside. It looked like a floating town.
“That was a very, very heavy conversation,” said Selban.
“Yes. Poor chap. He’s a strong man.”
“I liked him.”
“Me too,” said Loreticus. “He seemed like a good man carrying a rock around with him.”
“What next?”
“We need to find out more about these two. I didn’t see her as a fool, and the emperor wouldn’t have a second-rate mind teach his daughter. There’s something that feels wrong here.”
“Archivist, come here.”
A young, chinless man rounded the corner, blinking quietly as he took in his visitors. He was the type of person who would have been built out of left-overs. His shoulders were too narrow for his height, his hair too small for his head. The blue eyes were a tad too large and blinked like a lizard surveying a room. The archivist licked his lips.
“Hello,” he said hoarsely, then coughed. “Hello!” he chimed again, this time in a merrier voice.
“Hello,” replied Selban. “We need the records of an imperial employee. Roban the Tutor. We don’t know much else about him, but for the fact that he taught the imperials.”
“Oh ah, well, then we should have a good background on him,” said the archivist and turned on stiff hips. He waddled off towards the stacks of rolls at the back of the room, ignoring the newer shelves he’d previously been working on.
“Don’t you need to see our papers before you give us access?” asked Loreticus.
“No, sir, I know you. Loreticus of Lores, official court intelligencer for the current emperor and in the employ of General Antron and the Imperial Cousin, General Ferran. Academy peer of Ferran, protégé of former Spymaster Eitan. Unmarried, but well known as a heterosexual -”
“Gods, alright, man.”
“I’m also on your payroll.”
“Oh,” said Loreticus, surprised. “Really?”
“Through Selban, sir.”
“Oh. Well done, you two.”
The archivist shuffled up to a specific stack, reached out with a boneless hand and extracted a roll. Loreticus looked around the room, taking in the thousands of different records.
“How did you know where this one was?”
“Ah, I am presuming that you’re not interested in my filing and recollection systems.” He waited, so Loreticus shook his head. “I had to update it yesterday to say that he was dead.”
The roll laid out the basic details of the court employee. Born in the year 224 of the empire, died in 255, just before his birthday. Officially married to Pia of Struss (see Struss clan). Roban was acknowledged as a trusted advisor allowed to be alone with one of the imperial family within specific parts of the palace.
He had been born outside of the capital to workers in the household of a rich family. Not much is known of them, and Roban himself appeared not to know much as they both died in a fire when he was young. He was taken in by his aunt, a freedwoman who had accumulated a significant wealth and was about to become a diplomat for one of the generals.
The record was brief, uninteresting, without leads.
“Let me see Struss’s records, please.” He passed the Roban roll back to the archivist and waited whilst the man replaced it to the precise location from where he had taken it, twisted it to be the same way up as the thousands of others in the room, then padded down a narrow corridor of shelves, disappearing from sight.
Struss, pater familia, merchant. Married to Imelda. Supplies the palace with imports from the Western Empire and its neighbours: nails and carpentry goods; wood, wood treatments; spices and spiced oils; preservatives.
Other than his commercial records, there was little else known about him or his family. Loreticus could ask to see the sheaths of receipts which accompanied any trade with the palace, but his instincts told him that there would be few epiphanies in that slog.
“Roban’s aunt?”
Mateilia Asparta, diplomat to General Claisan to the Western Barbaric Kingdoms of Duesh, Ashka, and Selth. No known family of import. No known spouse. No known lovers. Not a believer. No important achievements or treaties signed. Wealth from imports, then banking services. She had rooms in the palace, where she had brought up the orphaned Roban. There was no date of death, but that was not uncommon for a diplomat serving abroad. These records were as much for history as they were for current reference.
Selban’s breath flooded over Loreticus’s head like a warm cheese wind. The spymaster shuddered.
“Not that far from here,” he muttered, reading over his master’s shoulder.
“Let’s go. Perhaps she’s still alive.”
The diplomats’ wing was a long corridor with only a few doors on it. Whilst it was the “right” side of the administrative wing, which was full of blue-spotted beetles geeking and gawking at payrolls and taxes, it was still a good walk from the imperial chambers.
One side of the corridor looked out over an internal square, and the tops of palm trees seemed to be within touching distance. Loreticus could imagine walking out of the door to the rooms, seeing the sharp shadows and feeling the cool arboreal breeze. Sounds were muted by height and absence of people, and the corridor seemed at complete peace.
Selban was walking swiftly between the doors, glancing at each as he went by. He stopped, twisted his head and gestured Loreticus forward.
There, in front of them, the grand door of the diplomat’s chambers stood ajar. Loreticus nudged past him, drawing his hidden blade, and stepping silently through the gap.
A large plate sped past his head, and he fell backwards to avoid it, slamming the door with his back.
“Good gods,” cried Selban from the other side. “That was almost my fing
ers.”
The spymaster turned, his short weapon pinched between thumb and finger.
There, standing before him, was Pia. She was in the act of taking another ornamental plate from the wall as rapidly as her thin arms would let her.
“Stop it, Pia,” said Loreticus calmly. She stopped and turned.
"Who are you?" she asked, her eyes round, her large lower lip shaking with fear.
“We’ve met before, in the emperor’s gardens,” he said.
“I’ve not been there for a long time. I don’t know you.”
He stared at her for a few breaths, looking for an emotion other than emptiness in her face. For the first time in his adult life, he felt wrong about his instincts.
“Sit down,” he said, gesturing toward a large sofa which sat in view through a door. “I’m going to let my friend in. He looks gruesome, but he’s reasonably harmless.”
Pia crept past him, keeping as far away as possible as she drifted through the large aperture to the reception room. Loreticus watched her, ready for her attempt at escape, reaching behind him to open the door.
“Well, bloody bloody buggery,” snapped Selban as he came in. “You could have broken my fingers. Do you know how many wives would have been disappointed?” He looked up, questioning the quiet, and saw Pia staring back at him. “Oh. Unexpected. I thought that you must have tripped. Or been murdered. Or something.”
They walked together to the reception room, both pinning the girl with their eyes.
“Why are you here?” asked Loreticus. Selban sat quietly in a chair, positioning himself to her blindside.
“What do you mean? I am waiting for my husband.”
“Roban?”
“Yes,” she looked at Loreticus, then at Selban, then back. “Why? Do you know him?”
The spymaster scratched his chin, realising that there was an inexcusable length of stubble there, and he sat down on the opposite side to Selban.
“Did you have keys to get in here?” he asked.